


One of Them

by thisjustout



Category: Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Gen, Headcanon, Nonfiction, Speculation, but also kind of fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-29 17:18:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19404700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisjustout/pseuds/thisjustout
Summary: On Shallan’s trauma.





	One of Them

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [on Tumblr.](https://sidetog.tumblr.com/post/185660936040/) Slightly edited here.

The source of Shallan’s trauma appears to be the night of her mother’s death. However, she had already bonded Pattern at that point—and it’s impossible to bond a spren without already having already experienced _some_ degree of trauma.  
  
So what did it? One possibility lies in the vitriol with which Shallan’s mother spoke of her. I find it unlikely that Brightness Davar got caught up in the Skybreakers’ fervor, seeing as they’re not a very fervent people. They don’t seem to _hate_ Radiants they way she did. Might this have been some other, displaced prejudice on the part of Shallan’s mother? What does it really mean that Shallan was one of “them”?  
  
Perhaps: Her mother’s protestations grated on Shallan. Her father wasn’t as nearly mean, but neither did he believe her. The certainty that she would remain trapped forever, never allowed to be herself, weighed heavily upon Shallan’s soul. She often cried herself to sleep.  
  
It was with horror that Brightness Davar watched her youngest child utter those accursed, unforgettable words. Her husband took the transformation as a sign from the Almighty; almost immediately he bent to the child’s whims. But the good Brightlady could not. She sought out an explanation, told everyone who would listen what had happened. Few believed her. But one man did—he called himself a Skybreaker.  
  
He validated her anxieties. This was no act of providence, he claimed; her child was a Surgebinder, someone who tampered in dangerous magics and who, for the greater good, must be killed. Her Brightness nearly wept for joy. The two began to plot the child’s death, for she could not, _would_ not, grapple with the reality of the situation—that in a flash of Stormlight, the fifth Davar son was a son no longer.


End file.
